Age About 30, I Stopped Looking Up

When You Do Try To Picture The Boys Who Do Ask You Out, They're Absolutely Featureless, Like Old Carvings Eroded By Centuries Of Rain And Wind.

The Failures Of Other Genres To Provide An Emotional Connection With Some Of Their Characters And Narratives Gives Memoir A Toehold.

There Are Women Succeeding Beyond Their Wildest Dreams Because Of Their Sobriety.

The Lesson You've Got To Learn Is The Someday You'll Someday Stagger To, Blinking In Cold Light, All Tears Shed, Ready To Poke Your Bovine Head In The Yoke They've Shaped. Everyone Learns This. Born, Everyone Breathes, Pays Tax, Plants Dead And Hurts Galore. There's Grief Enough For Each. My Mother Learned By Moving Man To Man, Outlived Them All. The Parched Earth's Bare (once She Leaves It) Of Any Who Watched The Instants I Trod It. Other Than Myself, Of Course. I've Made A Study Of Bearing And Forbearance. Everyone Does, It Turns Out, And Note Those Faces Passing By: Not One's A God.

The Truth Is When I Went To Graduate School I Would've Said I Was Among The Least Talented Of The Students, I Was Certainly The Least Smart, Or Less Educated. But I Worked Very Hard.